Gem’s is an action puzzle game developed by Cublo Games and a nice flash adaptation of Hexic, another great game invented by the famous Alexei Pajitnov, the Russian genius behind Tetris!

Gem’s is in fact a more cerebral puzzler than Tetris and once again very addictive. Your goal here is to rotate different colored hexagons and match at least 3 adjacent, same-color ones in order to create a group or cluster. Once a cluster is formed, it will disappear from the game board and any hexagons above it will move downwards.

Use your mouse to select a group of three highlighted hexagons and then click on the left button to rotate them. Click on the rotate button on the right bottom of the board to select the rotation (clockwise or counterclockwise).

A 50 seconds timer was added to spice things up at the beginning. Each time a cluster is formed, a slight amount of time is added back onto the timer. The game ends when there is no more available move or once you have lost all seconds off the timer.

Combine black pearls to gain bonus such as free pearl, 5 free moves (the timer stops for the next five moves), map collect (new board) or time bonus. Try to create a flower child by surrounding one hexagon with six of the same color and then get a pearl. Succeed to combine three pearls and eventually get a 50 000 points reward.

On the downside, there is no pause option in the game and no high scores table either. But the major flaw of the game is the exceeding time bonuses added for every new cluster formed in upper levels, usually leading to endless play!

Overall, with simple but elegant graphics and a great concept, Gem’s really deserves a try.

Have fun!